Tag Archives: Fogous

Fabulous Facts about Fogous

Before we delve too deeply into fogous and the mystery surrounding them it is probably a good idea to describe what a fogou is. The word ‘fogou’ is very simply Cornish for ‘cave’ and this gives us our first clue. It is, in essence a subterranean (or semi-subterranean) structure. Occasionally other writers will compare the Cornish fogou with the Scottish or Irish souterrain but beware of this pitfall; the Cornish will not thank you for it.

The structures in themselves are “…a low passage walled with dry masonry and roofed with large stone slabs, generally but not invariable underground and generally attached to an Iron Age settlement.” (Weatherhill, Pool and Thomas 1980 ‘The Principle Antiquities of the Land’s End District’).

The passagway at Halligye Fogou on the Trelowarren Estate – photo by Jim Champion (geograph.co.uk)

Typically, fogous vary between 12 to 15 metres in length and 1.5 to 1.8 metres in width. The passage walls have a degree of curvature with courses of corbelled masonry to reduce roof width and in most cases the passage itself curves or branches making it difficult to see the end as you enter. Most have a wide accessible entrance today, but it does seem that for many the original access point was a low restrictive doorway called a ‘creep’.

As mentioned before fogous are almost always associated with a settlement dating to the Iron Age and for many they would have been the only stone structure within that settlement. The distribution of these sites is restricted to areas west of the Fal Estuary with the majority being in West Penwith. There are at least twelve sites known for certain and at least another a dozen or so possible sites suggested from placenames, fieldnames and those described by past antiquarians. For example, the West Penwith Survey identified one such site at Lower Leah from a description left by J T Blight in 1850 of a subterranean chamber in which burial urns and fused tin were found.

No two fogous are exactly alike and to further emphasise this, the structures at Carn Euny and Bosporthennis each have what is known as a ‘beehive hut’. The name is something of misnomer as the structures were highly unlikely to have anything to do with bees or bee keeping. The name was given due to the shape of the chamber, which resembles a beehive.

Excavations at Carn Euny during the 1960s and 70s depict a settlement which was occupied for about seven hundred years from around 500BC. There were several phases, the earliest consisted of timber structures and the last was the construction of the stone courtyard houses which are visible today. The ‘beehive hut’ is associated with the earliest phase of settlement, a second phase of roundhouses are associated with the construction of the long passage and by the time the courtyard houses were constructed the passage was made to link into the courtyard house north of it.

Inside the fogou

Inside the beehive

The entrance to the fogou at Carn Euny – not the original entrance.

The most recent fogou to be excavated is that of Boden Vean on the Lizard Pennisula. This particular site was first recorded in 1816 by the vicar of Manaccan and then was promptly lost. In 1991 the current landowner was having some pipe work done in a field when a cavity emerged and the fogou was rediscovered. Geophysical survey identified several anomalies, one of which turned out to be a Bronze Age roundhouse and subsequent excavations demonstrated that the fogou was part of an enclosed Iron Age settlement known as a ‘round’ (which can rather confusingly be anything but round…).

Bodean Fogou under excavation.

Fogous and their Function

What were fogous used for? This is the heart of the mystery. The lack of consensus, of agreement as to what the function of a fogou is defines Cornish archaeology and archaeologists. There are three possible explanations – a place of refuge, storage and ritual. Lets’ examine each of these in turn.

Refuge – this particular theory has generally fallen out of favour. The argument against this theory relates to the accessibility of the fogou. When most fogous were built the only access was through the creep and whilst it is an easy enough task to crawl through if you are young, fit and not claustrophobic, an elderly or infirm person would find it difficult. The second point against this theory is the lack of an exit strategy. It would be an easy enough task for any would be raiders to smoke out the people hiding in these passages, there are no air vents and no other way out. The third and final nail in the coffin relates to the overall position of these structures within the landscape, many are situated within easy distance of well defended site such at Carn Euny with the hillfort of Caer Bran only a short distance uphill.

The orignal entrance at Carn Euny known as the creep.

Storage – for many archaeologists this is the prevailing theory. Comparisons are often made to souterrains found in Brittany, Scotland and Ireland which did have a more utilitarian purpose and are often of very different dates. However, Ian Cooke suggests that the fogou is not an imported concept, they “…represent a continuation of long established local megalithic traditions.” (Antiquities of West Cornwall 3 Carn Euny Village and Fogou).

In Cornwall there is a tradition of building places of storage, these are called ‘crows’ or ‘hulls’. A crow is a small stone hovel used to store tools, fuel and in some cases livestock. They are often built into the side of a field hedge or bank and most are at best two centuries old. A hull is a chamber dug out of the ground and faced with stone; often there will be a lintelled doorway to prevent collapse. They are found close to settlements and were used to store perishable foods. These structures were common from around fourteenth or fifteenth century.

However, the argument against the use of fogous as a place of storage considers how damp and airless they are (a visit to any fogou requires a pair waterproof shoes at anytime of the year). Research has shown that the only foodstuffs suitable to storing in this environment are beer and dairy produce. There is also the accessibility issue, clambering down the creep with a barrel of beer is not the most efficient means of storing your excess foodstuffs. It is possible that the fogou did change in use over time, the later opening up of the fogou during its last phase at Carn Euny would have made it a better option for the storing of foodstuffs.

A secondary argument also looks at the effort required to build the fogou and as mentioned before, at the time of construction it would have been the only stone building in the settlement. Both suggest that the fogou was a socially important structure, which leads us the final possible explanation.

Ritual – some archaeologists tend to shy away from using ‘ritual’ to describe a sites function. This is a backlash from criticism in the 80s and 90s when archaeologists were accused of using ‘ritual’ as a definition when nothing else fitted. The term was certainly bandied about…even so, the idea of the fogou as a place of ritual does need to be examined because interpretations as places of storage or refuge are at this point unsatisfactory.

The entrance to the fogou at Chysauster.

Ian Cooke has spent a substantial amount of time recording and analysing fogous throughout Cornwall. For him and many others involved in earth mysteries fogous were definitely places of ritual. Cooke found that all but two were ‘symbolically’ aligned to the rising midsummer sun and the two that weren’t were aligned on the setting of the midsummer sun. He says symbolically as at the time no light would have entered the passages. The importance of midsummer needs no explanation here. Some archaeologists have questioned these alignments but have noted the monumental nature of the fogou, drawing analogies with a medieval church within a settlement of less substantial structures (P. Herring 1994 CA Journal 33).

Cooke also noted how “…the majority of fogous, where sufficient remains can be traced, have the northern end of their long curved passage aligned north-east to correspond with the prevailing direction taken by the subterranean mineral lodes…” Drawing a connection between the tin trade and the construction of the fogous, perhaps it is not unsurprising then when we here of small finds of fused tin found inside the passages and in the backfill of the creep such as at Carn Euny.

“…the rationale behind building fogous was the need to provide a place of contact between the plunderers of the earth and the dieites believed to control the fertility of the land and the mineral wealth beneath it, and that these places were used for the performance of rituals related to the pagan religion of Iron Age West Cornwall in which a Sun God and Earth Mother Goddess formed the central element.” (Ian Cooke The Mother and the Sun 1993).

It has also been suggested fogous may have been a place where important rituals took place which relate to transformation such as when a child becomes an adult or during death. The dark places of the world have always represented an otherworldliness to human beings, even to this day, caves are regarded as special places.

The more sceptical who argue against a ritual function point out, “by and large fogous lack obvious design features or contexts that make them stand out as undoubted ritual structures,” (P. Rose ‘Shadows in the Imagination: Encounters with caves in Cornwall CA Journal 2000/1). The argument follows that because we have been unable to identify any elements within Celtic belief that may be associated with the fogou then a ritual function is unlikely.

However lets briefly consider what we do know, it is fairly well understood that the people of the Celtic Iron Age attributed all aspects of the world around them with a spirit of some kind and that ‘no activity however trivial would have been entered into without some thought for the attitudes of those who inhabited the other world’ (B Cunliffe Facing the Ocean 1995). Surely this would have extended to the extraction of tin and other metals from the ground.

“As tin extraction is an activity that is unique to Cornwall, particularly west Cornwall, is it not possible that the fogou is a unique regional response to this,” (TM Rowe Cornwall in Prehistory 2005). The continuing fertility of the land and its mineral wealth would have been important concerns in this period.

Fogous and Folklore

All of the folk stories which surround fogous can be traced back to one of three themes.

It’s the location of hidden treasure.

They have impossibly long passages.

Associated with demons, witches, giants and other ‘dangerous’ creatures.

Thus, Piskey’s Hall was long thought to contain fairy treasure, at Boleigh there was a belief that the passage ran for many miles under the Penwith landscape and at Pendeen Vau there is a tale of a young woman dressed in white and carrying a red rose appearing at the mouth of the fogou on Christmas day. It is said if you see her you will die within the year.

There were giants at the fogous of Lower Boscaswell and Higher Bodinar and at Boleigh it is said that the Penwith witches were in the habit of meeting the Devil here.

It is not difficult to see how such stories might begin. Treasure seekers have for centuries dug holes in curious mounds in search of riches, the mound covering a fogou would have been no different. Should you ever visit a fogou without a torch (not recommended, by the way) the passage will seem to go on forever, it often feels as if time has stood still and the passage is never ending. As for demons, giants, witches and ladies in white foretelling your death, well, the ever active imagination of the human species may well be responsible.

Or, perhaps local folklore can give us hints about the fogou, as it is with a game of Chinese whispers, folk memory can distort ancient knowledge of a place as time goes by and other influences intervene. Stories of lost treasure might relate to knowledge of precious mineral lodes; the fear of the never ending passage may be just an extension of the fogou representing the underworld; the association of the devil and witches perhaps an attempt in early Christian fervour to discourage people away from ancient places of worship. For those who follow the path of the Goddess today, the role of the witch in the past is a manifestation of the Goddess, hence the persecution (put very simply).

Final thoughts

So are we any closer in solving this archaeological mystery? In short, no. Like so much when we are dealing with a time so very distant from our own it is difficult to make assumptions about sites such as fogous when the evidence is so sparse. It has been suggested in order to get a much clearer idea of the function a detailed excavation of a fogou undisturbed since time of abandonment would be ideal.

Even so, solving this mystery is left to the individual, only he or she can decide how these places were used and that is why fogous are special places – they are different things for different folks.

NB when visiting a fogou please take a torch and if you don’t like spiders, don’t look up…really, do not look up!

Links

Not a comprehensive list of links but a starting point for further investigation.

The landscape of west Cornwall in the late Iron Age is one of hillforts, cliff castles, ancient trackways, enclosures, round houses and courtyard houses.

Many of these features are known throughout the landscap of prehistoric Britain but it is the courtyard house which offers a point of difference from the rest of the country. Courtyard houses appear to be a unique adaptation of the more traditional round house and are found only in the Land’s End peninsula. They are usually very substantial ranging in size from 15 – 30 meters with walls up to two meters thick. Their name is derived from the presence of a series of rooms situated around a central courtyard. The rooms are partially built into the thickness of the outer walls and may have served as spaces not only for living but also storage, workshops and byres.

“A typical courtyard house has a long recess on one side of the central yard, probably a stable or byre and, on the opposite side, a long, narrow room, perhaps a workshop or store. Between the two, and directly across the courtyard from the house entrance, is the largest room, circular or oval in shape, which was set aside for the living, eating and sleeping needs of the family. Other room may be present, too, and some living rooms have a back door leading out of the house. Stone lined and capped drains are a feature of these houses, as are stone hearths…”

(Weatherhill C 2009 ‘Cornovia’ page 35)

Many would have developed from open settlements of round houses set within fields for agricultural communities. A landscape already ancient. When the demand for tin increased during the second century AD there is no doubt that these farming communities would have engaged in this activity. Gradually these settlements were abandoned between the second and sixth centuries AD although the communities did not leave simply moved to lower ground.

There are around two dozen known courtyard house settlements surviving and at least ten have been destroyed during the last two hundred years. The best preserved and most easily visited of these sites are Chysauster and Carn Euny. Both of which represent examples of a village grouping, which included round houses and the mysterious structures known as Fogous (see the January issue of The Celtic Guidefor a discussion on Fogous).

The entrance to the fogou at Carn Euny – not the original entrance.

The entrance to the fogou at Chysauster.

CHYSAUSTER

Plan of Chysauster

The largest known site of this type, founded during the first century BC it consists of eleven houses in total. Eight are arranged in pairs on either side of a street. One is southwest of the main cluster whilst the remaining two are further down the hill to the southwest. The fields of the village were to the north east and in 1984 rescue work revealed the remains of round houses and a Bronze Age barrow. It has also been tentatively suggested that cereals were grown in these fields. Although no pollen evidence has to date been found, furthermore the acidic quality of the soils in the area have resulted in no metal tools or bones being preserved. making any meaningful interpretations difficult. Attached to most of the houses are small terraced garden plots.

Originally interprested as post sockets – now thought to be small grinding stones.

In 1873 William Copeland Borlase cleared out what is now known as house 6. Further excavation were done in 1897 on house 4 by two members of the local antiquarian society. The first major excavation did not take place until 1928 under the direction of T D Kendrick of the British Museum and Dr H. O’Neil Hencken. It was during this time that the land owner placed a large part of the site under the guardianship of the Office of Works.

One of several stone lined hearths.

In 1931 a fuller examination of the site was carried out by Hencken, excavating houses 5 and 7 with more work on houses 3, 4, 6 and 9. The term ‘courtyard house’ was first coined by Hencken during these early excavations. In 1984 the guardianship of the site passed on to the newly constituted English Heritage.

Entering House 6

Although later excavations failed to reveal whether or not Chysauster was predated by an earlier site as with Carn Euny there is some suggestion that there is an earlier site further along the hillside yet to be found or indeed it could be associated with the fogou. A nineteenth century account reported that much of the old village had lately been removed that the fogou no longer lay within it as before (Christie P 1987). Suggesting that there was a much more substantial settlement on the hillside then what we see today.

Plan of house 6 – note the very thick walls.

The entrance to the ‘main’ room of house 6.

CARN EUNY

Plan of Carn Euny

This site is much smaller than Chysauster consisting of four interlocking structures in addition to a number of smaller roundhouses constructed in the first century BC. An earlier phase of the site consisted of timber built roundhouses which were occupied for at least 400 years.

The first investigations of the site were in the 1860s in the well preserved fogou but it was not until some hundred years later when a more systematic excavation was undertaken (see the journals Cornish Archaeology from the late 1960s for more detailed information on these excavations).

A paved entrance to one of the houses.

A quern stone.

Practical Issues

One of the main discussions regarding this type of settlement site is in relation to how such massive structures were roofed. The generally accepted theory states that the individual rooms would be roofed with the central courtyard open to the elements. In 1997 Jacqui Wood proposed an alternative theory which saw the entire structure being covered by a single roof (Cornish Archaeology 1997 No 36). Interpretations boards at both sites show individual roofs over each room with some even having flat roofs.

The above two images are pictures taken from the interpretation boards at Carn Euny (left) and Chysauster (right).

In 1993 an experimental roof was built over one of the ‘rooms’ at Chysauster. It was this exercise which set Jacqui Wood on her path to find an alternative roofing solution.(Photo by P Allison http://www.geograph.co.uk)

The main objection to the conventional thinking relates to the issue of drainage. The conical roofs are depicted as sitting on top of the thick in-filled walls and given the amount of precipitation Cornwall receives every year, drainage off the roofs would have been an issue, even more so for the flat roofs. A large single roof would have prevented this and created a large and cosy interior, the now central courtyard would take on the appearance of a ‘hall’. With the creation of additional space within the roof space on top of the thick walls. Thus the courtyard house becomes a ‘galleried house’.

“The purpose of the substantial infill of the walls would now come into its own. There could have been another shorter ring of posts to support another ring beam nearer to the outer walls, adding stability to the roof. Looking at the structure from this viewpoint another possible use for the substantial infills becomes evident. The large flat areas at the top of the walls could have been covered with timbers to create another well supported floor.”

Jacqui Wood’s alternative arrangement for the roof of house 6 at Chysauster (Wood J 1997)

Objections to the single roof theory are based upon the size of the roof needed to cover such a large area, although as it has been pointed out equally large structures are known throughout prehistory in both Britain and on the European mainland. Of course this argument may never come to a satisfactory conclusion without the aid of a time machine, but it is still interesting to offer alternatives to conventional theories.

Carn Euny and Chysauster are just two of the many similar sites which can be found around West Penwith, others are not so easy to get to and are often overgrown with bracken and brambles. Standing on the hillside at Chysauster on a brisk winters day, looking down the valley it feels very easy to put yourself into the ancestors shoes as you hunker down behind the thick walls in an effort to keep warm.

Final Thoughts

One question which has not been addressed is who lived in these settlements and why are they only found in the west of Cornwall? Contrary to popular belief I do not believe that these sites belonged to your average Iron Age farming community – this is not to say they did not farm – but rather the people who lived in these substantial structures were different. Several factors support this idea –

The majority of courtyard house settlements have fogous within their bounds.

They are associated with hillforts.

They are not the only settlement type of this era within west Cornwall; isolated hamlets of round houses and ’round’ are much more prevalent than courtyard houses.

Some have suggested that a priestly class occupied these villages (hence the presence of the fogous). Without further research and excavation it is difficult to say exactly who lived here but I would certainly suggest they were not your average farming community. As to why courtyard houses are only found in west Cornwall…the jury is still out on that one. However, I do have an suspicion that there is a connection with the extraction of tin. It might just be coincedence that Chysauster, the largest courtyard house village, is only a short distance from Mounts Bay and a possible site of ‘Ictis’ where it is said the Cornish traded with merchants from the Mediterranean. Or Bosullow Trehyllys (another less well known and unexcavated site) situated on the slopes below Chun Castle an Iron Age (and later) hillfort is also on the path of a well known trackway called the Tinners Way.

All of which makes for interesting discussions…

FURTHER READING

Christie P. (1978) ‘The excavation of an Iron Age Souterrain and Settlement at Carn Euny, Sancreed Cornwall’ Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 44.